I dreamt New York was sinking
as I walked down Sixth Ave
just like a tourist, just like Christmas trees.

Don’t look up, the driver told me
as I left the shuttle from my flight.
My motion is hardly about traffic.

So how am I to know the sky is broken
by building lines? To trust such a gesture
as intimate as sight is such a new sin.

I stared blankly at the ground, starving
for importance. Lana Turner died days
from here and now I dance with O’Hara’s pedestrians.

Clumsy is my Maumee name.
Left feet fall gracefully from right
hands. I make love to this sprawling city.

Wild, intimate, nameless, faceless love
in this dance. Rhythm is no
manifesto in a world ready for manifestas.

I need to relearn this cocky skyline.
Redraw a line of sight where floating becomes
more a dream and less impossible..

–Dan Nowak,
Of a Bed Frame
Accents Publishing

More from Of a Bed Frame and Dan Nowak:

• “Familial Cannibalism”
• “Unremarkable”
• “Underneath My Suit”
• Imaginary Friend Press (founded and edited by Dan Nowak)
• Of a Bed Frame at the Accents Store
• Dan Nowak’s author page

Dan Nowak’s first book, Recycle Suburbia, won the 2007 Quercus Review Poetry Series Award. He also has a chapbook, Burning the Arson Dictionary: Poems for Thomas McGrath published by RockSaw Press. Dan is co-founder and co-editor ofImaginary Friend Press and an editor for New Sins Press. Dan lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and enjoys that Lakefront Brewery is less than a mile from his home.